i'm andrew luce, 16 year old producer from the bay area - ask me anything

hi r/trap! feel free to ask me just about anything. i have a physics test today and i’m driving home so my responses might be a little scattered, but i can answer questions until tomorrow morning.

a little background on me: i’ve been producing since i was 13 and came from a background of playing guitar (electric and classical) and drums since i was 8. i’ve been releasing remixes pretty consistently since january (you may be familiar with birthday sex or candy shop) but i’m currently in the works on an EP with original vocals.

Hey Andrew! I just want you to know that my buddies and I smoke trees every night and listen to your stuff. It's super dope! I was surprised to learn how young you are, keep up the dope jams. Shoutout from Arizona.

Just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of the remixes you are putting out, and your style; the drops are SO dirty and unique, but they still maintain the color of the original sound. Keep up the good work dude.

What is your daily schedule like? Whats is the exact balance between making music and going to high school? Also, what are your plans for after you graduate? My mind was blown when I found out you were still in high school.

great question. i go to a boarding school, so i live at school (although i'm fortunate enough to have a house close by).

i usually will fill my free periods during the school day working on music, and i'll work during my study hall at night. i also have a girlfriend and a mandatory sport, so weekends can be very busy. i basically fit in music whenever i can, and if i feel like i'm slacking i will go into monk mode and just lock my door and create until i can't anymore.

i do plan on going to college (hopefully berklee in boston) but going the year after i'm done with high school is completely dependent on my career. there's no such thing as too much knowledge, but if it makes more sense for me to take a break to tour or work on music then i will

performance: i was using ableton with an APC40 for a while, but i realized that using ableton live (for me) is only a good idea if you're only playing your own stuff because you have so much versatility (like flume, pretty lights, etc). i switched over to CDJs a few months ago and love the convenience of rekordbox, but when i have enough music/fans to play only my own music i'll likely switch back to ableton.

production: i use ableton live 9 suite. i spent two years making money to buy a bunch of hardware, but i mostly work in the box. i have an ableton push, apc 40, midi fighter, launch pad, teenager engineering op-1 and a few other things which i all love. the ableton push is great when you need an idea, but i work fastest just using the computer

I honestly love the synth as a standalone but have yet to find a great use for it for actual production purposes. I mean, it's a great toy and sometimes resampling sounds with a filter like the CWO can be cool. Idk I get SO much more use out of my Junos and Access Virus.

Dude, I just learned about you over the summer from my friends, and you are hella talented. And it was even cooler when I found out from your soundcloud page that you're also from the bay area, particularly SF (I'm from the East Bay). I love your Weeknd - Drunk In Love remix the most. Hope you'll come up with more remixes of The Weeknd, I think they're the best. Keep it up bruh

Where did you learn all the techniques and get the ability to create such an awesome sound? I see you started when you were 14 ish and want to know where you got all of this experience and talent from whilst also being in school. Myself along with my roommates are all very interested in producing but have yet to really create much. Also glad to see a local! We are all in the bay area too and love your music! Keep it up!

music theory and playing instruments helped a lot, but the biggest thing for me was just spending time with the software. for both my freshman and sophomore of high school i basically didn't go outside

Hey Andrew, RLS graduate here (2013), have nothing to ask but would just like to say great work. When some of my friends and I (other alumni) got together for a road trip, we actually listened to your music, it's dope, keep the work up, hope you can keep on with it!

So many questions. Hope this won't be too many. What has best helped your sound progress from what it used to be to where it is now? What is the best way to learn to build your own patches in Massive? What are some other VSTs you recommend? Best piece of advice for producers just starting? Best piece of advice you could give to someone when they're stuck on a certain loop and don't know where to go from there? What is your first step in starting a remix(ex. drum loop, vocals, etc.)? What do you consider as your best song or favorite song?

spend like a weekend just fucking around in massive. it's not too difficult to learn, and while it may seem intimidating at first it makes a lot of sense. online tutorials are great and extensive, but they might be a little too much to start with. all synths usually work the same (even though massive is a little different given the number of oscillator patches)

all the native instruments stuff is great, but don't spend too much time or money trying to work those out before you know the basics. start in operator and analog (assuming you use ableton) and just understand synthesis.

if you aren't working as hard as you can, then someone else is

go outside. or wait until you're absolutely exhausted, make something awful, then wake up and use that for inspiration

lay out the vocals, make a basic form, then (usually) make a melody. sometimes i'll do drums first though

birthday sex or drunk in love are probably my favorite, but i think each song gets a little better technically. the way that i did the lead sound on the drop of birthday sex is actually way more complex and interesting than it sounds, so every time i hear it i'm just shocked to know that what i did came out alright

WTF YOU'RE 16? I heard your birthday sex remix when it first came out on soundcloud and have loved it since. Keep going strong man. Put in some hard work and you will make it big. I love your music man

thank you! i heard "appetite for destruction" after a family part when i was 8, and started taking guitar lessons immediately after that. electronic music became an interest when i was 13; i started to get a little bored with one sound and realized that i could be basically building my guitar if i made my music on the computer

Being so young, does your family support your choice in career path? And with some of the works you have put out not necessarily being the "cleanest" of choices (Birthday Sex, Candy Shop), do your parents ever discourage that kind of music?

great question, i am blessed with having an extremely supportive and caring mother. my parents have been encouraging me to do music since i started, and they were originally a little put off when i transitioned away from the guitar but they're incredibly supportive now (and don't show any care about the explicit music)

live 9 suite. i love native instruments and fabfilter plugins, sylenth, waves plugins and many others. honestly the instruments and effects in live are great (i use sampler, analog and operator all the time)

i started playing guitar/drums when i was 8 and started producing when i was 13. carmack is probably my biggest inspiration right now. i took lessons for guitar and was classically trained but i learned production on my own

get a DAW and do not buy/try any external plugins until you've figured out the basics.

this isn't really a production based tip, but just figure out what you're doing it for. "progression" can be subjective; for one person it could be making a certain amount of money/playing at a certain festival and for another it could be just making a damn good piece of music. make little milestones to get to your goal and use those to keep you motivated

that's a pretty good tip, for me it's about an hour. my second tip would be don't delete anything no matter how bad it is. songs i'm making today have little ideas from 1-2 years ago.

what i found really helped me in the beginning was trying to completely recreate songs. this way, you don't get too caught up in the creative aspect of things but it really helps you learn synthesis and how the software works

i think i've answered this thoroughly a few times on here, but find software that works for you and don't get anything else until you completely master the software and can make something decent with the basics. it's very easy to get lost in the world of VSTs

yo andrew i just looked at your soundcloud and im seriously impressed by the stuff you're putting out. I love DJing and I do some local events here and there, but I know that I'm not going to go anywhere with this unless I start producing. I just can't really get motivated/ I guess I'm too intimidated by the learning curve to start music production though. I was just wondering if you had any tips to get started?

I figure it's kinda like hitting the gym, once you start you can't stop, but I can't really seem to get started.

that's a pretty good metaphor, although you definitely hit road blocks along the way. it is definitely a good idea to start producing, although it certainly takes a lot of time to get good at it. i'd say there's nothing holding you back from starting, and if you don't think it's worth it then it's not meant to be. you miss 100% of the shots you don't take

mate you're awesome, I heard that remix the other day, was well crazy //

Please use the push more, its a beautiful machine that deserves center stage / with that setup you have you shouldn't have to touch the computer at all - well hardly - if you do can i recommend getting a big touchscreen.

putting basically all my time into music for two years helped a lot. if you can get some knowledge on basic musical concepts (chord structures, a little bit of theory and rhythm) you'll go a long way. feel free to message me anywhere if you need help!

I know I'm late to this, but I just wanted to tell you how amazing your basslines are. I have a big subwoofer in my truck and your songs sound better on it then 90% of big hiphop or trap artists. If you want more bass, I'd suggest using specific low frequencies (32-34hz is what my box is tuned to) and detailing that in the song details. The only person doing that now is Decaf, but they're just slowed versions not full remixes like yours. Either way, I love your bass. Keep it up, you got a bright future.

Hey man. Great stuff at such a young age! I'm 17 and I produce here and there for fun. I have 2 questions I hope you can answer. 1. In your birthday sex remix is the drop sound a processed vocal sample or a synth? It sounds so much like vocals. What effect are you using there? 2. Are you using vocal stems for your remixes or doing more of a bootleg? Do you contact the artist and request the vocals? I'm unsure about the whole remix thing. I'd love to hear back from you dude. Thanks.

it is a processed vocal sample. i've actually thought about putting up a tutorial online of how i did it since i get asked this a lot. i used the female voice in "the moon song" from the her soundtrack, with compression EQ saturation and a few other things

i do both, most of them i can find an acapella but others (drunk in love, often, etc) have been bootlegged. i have some official remixes that i'm working on right now that'll be outside soon though!

I have a little show out of KUSF radio out in SF. Your music fits pretty well into the mix I play on my show; any chance you would want to come by the studio and have a little pow-wow, maybe show a little bay area love? It would be great for the listeners to learn a little more about your production style, where you draw your influences from and a little more about yourself in general.

I read somewhere you may or may not know how to drive, if that's the case I could pick you up and get you back before dinner.

Cheers! congrats on the Cudi remix; that remix is hard as fuck, keep doing you.

Dope music man! Big fan, you're killing the game! Like you probably were at my age,14, I just want to get my music heard! Who did you start sending your music to for it to get heard? Did you send it to any promo soundcloud or youtube accounts? The track i'm focussing on is my remix of revolution

i was sending my music to blogs/promos for a long time but it honestly didn't really get me anywhere because i found the blogs don't check their submissions. the best advice i can give is to just make great music; i know that doesn't help a whole lot right now but good, fresh music cannot be ignored

Faacckk man caught this one a little late haha It's cool if you don't get to answer but the ONE question I have is how the hell do you get your vocals to glide/pitch the way you do?! I'm familiar with Ableton and vocals chops, but your vocals always sound so crisp and unique! Any software helping you get that unique glide sound?

everything i do for vocals chops is ableton instruments/effects. i use sampler/simpler, EQ, saturation, compression, and make it monophonic. the quality of sound really really depends on the sample, but the effects help a lot too

"monophonic" is different than "mono." it's the opposite of polyphonic and makes it so the instrument can only play one note at a time (allowing it to glide). you're right though, a little stereo spread is a good idea

i use abletons compressor/glue compressor, EQ, "utility" and a large assortment of waves/fabfilter plugins depending on the sound i'm going for. i've recently been mixing my music myself then sending it off to a master, because the setup i have in my dorm room is really not as good as the one in a studio

What's up Andrew! First off, your remix of day n nite is amazing. It definitely seems as if you've found your sound/style and it works awesome. Who would you say your production is influenced by? Any plans in regards to touring soon? Thanks for doing this AMA, love your music!

i'm influenced by everything i hear, but i think that mr carmack is a great inspiration. his music is great, but he also doesn't confine himself to any walls. i'm in the phase right now of trying to carve my sound while still making music that people are going to like/find. when i develop enough of a fanbase, i might have to take a bit of a hiatus just to figure out what i want to do next, but i think my "sound" is shining through more than ever in this EP i'm currently working on.

Right on, mr carmack and djemba djemba are two of my favorite artists rn. You definitely have a sound unique to you and I look forward to all of your releases in the future, will definitely keep an eye out. You should be way bigger than you are imo and i think everyone else in this thread would agree. Thanks so much for the response man, keep making dope music!

both. i'm really enjoying making instrumentals for rappers/singers right now which i've been doing for my EP. i was classically trained and spent a ton of time learning music theory, and i really don't want to put that to waste. i'd love to include some guitar/live instruments into my music/live set in the future.

biggest and only. i've actually only played two real shows. i've played a ton of warehouse parties and school dances. on that note: if you want to feel completely emasculated but make fat money, play at private school dances. great practice and great pay at the consequence of truly feeling like less of a man when you drive home

I've been trying to produce trap music for a while but I can never get the bass to sound full like on your tracks. Can you spare any details on what you use to make your bass (eg. whether you prefer to use samples or synths) and what kind of processing you might apply to it (eg. eqs, compressors)?

i will always do a kick drum with a sub. i tune the kick, and i also will cut out below 50-60 hz on the kick to make sure the frequencies don't clash with the sub. there are a lot of great samples online to use for subs, but they're pretty easy to make and all based on the same thing (a sine wave).

i usually will put a bit of compression, saturation/distortion and eq on my sub, depending on what sound i'm going for. sometimes i'll take three subs and stack them on top of each other, with different EQs and distortion for each one

Do you have any background in piano? If so, do you feel that has helped you tremendously with production? I just got into production myself, and I only have a musical background in percussion, which definitely helps with trap but I feel like my lack of piano skills holds me back

a very very little amount, but it is mostly physical restraints that hold me back. i could read music and play it on the piano, but not nearly up to normal speed just because i'm not used to the instrument if that makes sense.

i know a lot of people that have great technical skill but no musical skill. don't be too worried about the piano, but having knowledge of theory, chord structures etc is extremely helpful and very often overlooked in electronic music

Hey Andrew, Me and a couple of friends have been a fan of your music for a while. I live in the bay area, and was wondering where me and my friends could come watch you perform nearby. I was wondering what kind of tips would you'd give someone who wants to start producing their own music.

that's a great question, and i think it varies from person to person. it takes a long, long time to be able to produce something good. the best advice i can give would be to not take everything in at once. get a DAW that works for you and just stay within that without any external plugins or sound. slowly expand, because there is a massive world of stuff out there and trying to absorb it all at once is too much (at least for me)

What have you done that has brought your sound from being "eh" to wow this is actually sounding like music? As a producer for about year, i'd just like some insight, as everything i'm making just sounds like garbage or has no direction. Hope you get what i'm getting at... Love your music keep it up! Thanks.

i know exactly what you're talking about. time and effort are what has helped me the most. as for the actual "sound," knowledge of mixing and mastering is super helpful. get a good pair of speakers and just make music until you think it sounds good.

online tutorials are great, but i think the best way to learn is to tweak knobs and just hear what they do.

with that being said, even though this sounds stupid, DAW manuals are fantastic sources of information if you have any software related questions. i've probably read through the ableton manual at least three times